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Stock Certificate - War Munitions Supply Company of Western Australia

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Subcollections

Edwin Charles Garbett Artworks and Drawings

Overview

Share Certificate 1044 dated 11 November 1915 for the issue of four shares in the War Munitions Supply Company of Western Australia to Edwin Charles Garbett

Historical information

Among the nations that comprised the British Empire, the First World War has generally either been forgotten, as in India, as irrelevant to the achievement of political independence, or remembered, as in Canada, as the catalyst for developing a separate national identity. This article argues that both these historical interpretations ignore the extent to which the First World War was a shared British Empire experience. The article examines the establishment of the War Munitions Supply Company of Western Australia as an example of the popular movement to make artillery ammunition that swept many parts of the British Empire in 1915. The munitions movement provided an outlet for the patriotic surge that occurred in April–May 1915 in reaction to the German use of poison gas and the sinking of the Lusitania. It was also an attempt to overcome wartime economic disruption by creating a new local industry. The practicalities of cost and shipping meant that by 1917 artillery ammunition production was continued only in Britain, Ireland, and Canada, but in 1915 the Western Australian company was part of an Empire-wide movement to make munitions and support the war.

Details

Registration number

cwa-org-32-99-379

Inscriptions and markings

Edwin Charles Garbett was born in Melbourne, Victoria on 15 March 1889. He came to Western Australia by cattle ship in 1897 and moved around the southwest and attended many different schools before settling in Midland in 1904. He attended Chidlow Wells School and in 1907 he won a Midland Junction Technical Education scholarship in mechanical drawing, forming part of his apprenticeship in diesel engineering with the WA Government Railways Workshop in Midland.
After Edwin completed his apprenticeship, he moved to Sydney to work on ships, before sailing on a steamer to England. Edwin documented this trip in detail, drawing the workings of the ship’s engine in pencil on various scraps of paper. On arrival in England, he found work as a fitter with a railway company and again, describes their locomotives, illustrating them and recording information.
Edwin returned to Western Australia and continued his work as a fitter at the Midland Railway Workshops before enlisting with the 2nd Light Railway Company on 24 March 1917, his service number was 1909. Edwin undertook further training as a blacksmith and fitter at Broadmeadows in Melbourne before sailing aboard the “Ascanius” in May 1917. He was stationed at St Lucia Barracks, Borden in Hampshire and promoted to 2nd Corporal where he was paid 8/- per day as a fitter. He sailed from Southampton to France in September 1917.
Edwin sent postcards home, stating he was “somewhere in Belgium” in 1917 and from December 1918 until February 1919, he was stationed at Courtrai near the French border with 2nd Australian Light Railway Operating Company. After the Armistice, Edwin was granted leave from June to August 1919 to do a design course at A.H Clarkson Ltd, advertising specialists located in Fleet Street, London. Following this, he returned to Western Australia and his job at the Midland Workshops. Edwin died, aged 42, in 1932, from pneumonia and pleurisy.

Contextual Information

From August 2023 to February 2025, the Australian Army Museum of WA is presenting an exhibition of Edwin Garbett’s technical drawings and watercolours relating to his wartime service with the Railway Operating Division.

Geotag

-31.89646579291, 116.00429175534

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Australian Army Museum of Western Australia

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